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Big Change In Plan & Weight Loss

As the title suggests, I’ve had a major change in plan but despite that change or maybe because of it I’ve lost about 25 pounds. Now please keep in mind this is ABSOLUTELY not the way to lose weight but since I’m trying to look for the silver lining this is just about all I could come up with.

So back in April. while I was shampooing my hair/showering and getting ready for my evening shift at work I felt a vise grip my heart and I couldn’t catch my breath. A few moments later I felt my legs about to give out and I managed to sit on the side of the tub and tried calling out for help. I then lost all feelings in my legs. My 89-year-old mother came in but she couldn’t pick me up or help me because I was too heavy for her to help without hurting herself.

I called into work and let them know I believed I had suffered a heart attack yet I didn’t have any of the symptoms except for the vise grip on my heart which had since dissipated and eventually feeling returned to my legs. Knowing if I called an ambulance, I didn’t know if I would be conscious so believe it or not, once the feeling returned to my legs, I put on my clothes and drove myself to a nearby clinic where I knew they would transport me to my desired hospital.

So at the receptionist’s desk I told her that I think I had a heart attack and I couldn’t catch my breath and also I had very high blood pressure. She handed me a clipboard and told me to sit down and try to relax as I filled out the clipboard. My mother had come along for the ride and just in case of me passing out while driving, I told her to steer the truck off the road and call 911. Any way I stood at the window and said I don’t think she understood me, I said I think I had a heart attack and can’t catch my breath and I have very high blood pressure. A nurse overheard and she said she would be out in a moment and she was telling the truth, a moment later she opened the side door to bring me into the examination room area and before I knew what was happening I was sitting in a wheel chair and taken to a room. They hooked me up to an EKG machine and seconds later they told someone to call for an ambulance because I needed to be transported immediately.

All I remember after they said that was throwing up a couple of times and then the ambulance guys came in and lifted me onto the gurney and wheeled me out. I next woke up I was in the ambulance and recognized the overpass and knew we weren’t too far away from the hospital. I woke up again and they were bringing me out of the ambulance and I said I wish I would have kept my sunglasses on and my mom said they were in my purse.

Apparently my next conscious effort was the next day not long after I woke up from surgery that morning. I apparently was very bad and struggled with people because they had to secure my arms and legs to the bed because I kept saying to use my arms to start a catheter but they had to go through my neck because I blew out all the other veins.

Turns out I had a 2″ tear in my aortic vein (aortic aneurysm) out of my heart and they had to find a vein to graph it to the torn vein. Weird huh. Leave it up to me to do something weird. Then the blood was pooling around my heart and that was causing the pain in my heart. Less than 1 out of 3 people who go in for the operation even come off the table alive. Most people die especially how late they took me into surgery. They had to drop my temperature to bring down my raging blood pressure. I had one of the best surgeons and he said he was confident I would survive because I was a fighter, my fighting and them having to tie me down.

As I said when I woke up they were telling me to sit up and I argued with them, telling them I was sitting up but really I was laying down. When I did sit up my blood pressure hit the roof, so they told me to lay down and stay still. The next few days were spent not only on recovery but figuring out which BP meds worked best with me. A week and a day later I got out of the hospital which was good I really needed something more than a wipe cloth bath.

So now you’re probably wondering about the weight loss, well when I went in I wasn’t allowed to eat until after the surgery. I drank orange juice and had jello. Believe it or not that was very yummy. The next day I was asking for more jello and orange juice which they managed to dig up for me. By this time I had not realized that my brothers had switched who was watching over me. My brother who was trying to renew his VISA to South Africa had been in Washington D.C. but few back to Ft. Worth and then drove down to take over and help my mother since she doesn’t drive.

For about 3-4 days when I was in the hospital I had trouble even trying to eat and it would have normally been okay for my family to help me but my brother would leave and take my mother with him saying he knew I would soon fall asleep because I did it one time. Well finally on about the 4th day I broke down crying and begged my mother to cut up my food. My brother stayed out of the room and luckily my mother heard my plea and stayed to cut up my food. Then as I tried to eat, my hand was still shaking so bad she had to talk me into using the spoon to eat my rice and chicken. Finally with more than just water in my stomach I felt stronger the next day and could handle my eating spoon better. However, it was very hard on me to eat. It took a lot of energy to cut my meal which my mother now made sure she stayed for and a lot of energy to feed myself as well as energy to just chew my food.

So this was how I lost weight and when I got out I was already 10 pounds lighter but I had lost my appetite and it didn’t take very much to fill me up and so I continued to lose weight and ended up losing 25 pounds. This is not the way to lose weight but even now I’m struggling to keep my weight down and about to start another type of diet and exercise to keep my weight down and to even lose more weight.

My problem lies in the fact that this exercise plan really has me working out and it might not be so rough if I hadn’t had open heart surgery.

If you have high BP then please take your meds and don’t forget them like I did because you might not be as lucky as I was concerning the operation.